Finding Your Intuitive Voice
By India Leigh, Intuitive Reader, Spiritual Coach
How can you tell the difference between your own thoughts (or the ego voice, or mind chatter) and deeper guidance from your higher self? This is a question I’m asked often, and here are the first steps to hearing your own spirit messages more clearly.
Quiet your mind. It’s one of those things that sounds so incredibly easy but is, in reality, unbelievably challenging at first. The trick is to lean into what works for you. While meditation clicks for some, it can seem eternally out of reach for others. The key to unlocking your mind’s noise control panel will be unique to you. It could be music, time alone in nature, art, listening to guided meditations or self-hypnosis recordings (that was it for me). There are countless ways to temporarily turn down the volume on the mind’s activity that can deflect and screen out messages to and from our souls, or our higher selves. Once the sound level is turned down on the mind and turned up on the spirit, the guidance will be heard more clearly.
Ask for guidance. Because of the gift of free will, spirit guidance can come in only when we specifically request it. While meditation is the practice of listening for messages from the divine, prayer is the act of talking to the guides (including your own higher self) who are there to help us. But they can only do so when we ask for that help and are then open enough to receive it. The requests can be as specific as you need them to be, and you can ask for the signs and clarity and answers that you’re seeking. It helps tremendously to actually speak these requests for help out loud. Hearing your own voice speaking your feelings, fears, intentions, needs and desires can help align your mind with your soul–a crucial part of the process of co-creating your life with the divine, the Universe, God, Spirit … any name you prefer. Even if you don’t fully experience the belief that this presence and your team of divine guides are there at first, the more you practice this two-way exchange with them, the more you will recognize and feel the guidance.
Clear your blockages. As you venture further into this process of listening for guidance and asking for help, more and more of your own inner shadows will be brought into the light of awareness. As our innermost selves are illuminated through ever-increasing consciousness, the dark places within us where we’ve hidden our pain, fears, insecurities, anxieties, shame, etc., will become directly visible and more palpable. This is the point at which many decide that this “spiritual stuff” is not for them. The emotional and energetic clearing and purging of negativity can be unpleasant and uncomfortable, even downright excruciating. But the help, clarity and expansion that comes after the processing of those things is well worth the pain.
Staying attuned to the guidance once you learn to feel and receive it is a consistent, daily practice. But just like with physical practices, such as exercise, the pleasure and reward of the work very quickly outweigh the attention and discipline required. Once you begin unwrapping the delicious messages and gifts being delivered to you by the divine, you’ll never want to stop.
